Oracle and Hewlett-Packard rarely miss an opportunity to diss each other. The latest round of press releases and quarterly earnings calls are no exception.

Oracle's Safra Catz led the company's latest charge against HP

Earlier this week Oracle (ORCL) issued an oddly-worded announcement saying it would halt all development on software compatible with Intel's (INTC) Itanium microprocessor, and took the opportunity to point out that HP (HPQ) CEO Leo Apotheker did not mention his plans for Itanium in a recent presentation on his company's roadmap. HP responded with its own news release, stating that it remains committed to Itanium-based server platforms and that Oracle's announcement was a "shameless gambit to limit fair competition." Oracle answered with yet another statement claiming HP is "knowingly withholding" information from its Itanium customers.

The sparring continued on Thursday, during Oracle's quarterly earnings conference call with analysts. (Speaking of earnings, Oracle had another strong quarter--profit surged 78% and sales rose 37%). CEO Larry Ellison wasn't on the call because he was serving on jury duty, so president Safra Catz delivered this quarter's official jab at HP. Catz said Oracle's hardware margins were strong and that the company's purchase of Sun Microsystems would deliver a $1.5 billion profit in the first fiscal year. By contrast, she implied that HP paid too much for 3PAR, a data storage provider it bought in 2010. "And had we paid for Sun based on the HP 3PAR multiple, it would've cost us nearly $140 billion," Catz told analysts. "Don't worry, we wouldn't do that." More